PrepTest 107, Section 3, Question 7
Newsletter for community-center volunteers: Retired persons who regularly(69 more words not shown)
The inference drawn above is(2 more words not shown)
- Athe center has(7 more words not shown)
- Bit interprets "well-being"(16 more words not shown)
- Csome of those(18 more words not shown)
- Dgrowing older might(9 more words not shown)
- Ethose with better(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe healthier people are more able to volunteer.
Think about a retired person who is seriously ill and confined to bed. That person may want to help at the community center but be unable to get there. Someone who is healthier and has more resources may have both the ability and the opportunity to volunteer. We could then find healthier people among the volunteers without volunteering being what made them healthier.
The newsletter's comparison is still useful information. The volunteers have better health, outlook, resources, and overall functioning than the nonvolunteers. But which way does the explanation run? Perhaps volunteering improves those things by keeping people active and involved. Perhaps those advantages make volunteering possible in the first place. The comparison alone doesn't decide between those stories.
What we’re looking for
The newsletter treats the better outcomes as a benefit of volunteering. That's the step to challenge. For the flaw question, I want the answer pointing out that people who already have those advantages may be better able to volunteer. We don't need to prove volunteering has no benefits. We need to show why the comparison doesn't establish the benefit being claimed.
Working the answers
- A
The center may want more volunteers, but a motive to attract them doesn't make its conclusion wrong. It could benefit from recruiting people and give sound evidence for the benefits of volunteering. We should examine the connection between the evidence and conclusion rather than reject the argument because the center has an interest in it.
- B
Those factors are a reasonable way to discuss how well people are doing. Nothing in the argument depends on an unusual definition of well-being. The problem is the claim that volunteering produces the better condition, not the inclusion of health, outlook, or resources in that condition.
- C
Some members of one group being older than some members of the other does not establish that the groups are systematically different in age. Two comparable groups can each contain a range of ages. The passage also presents the nonvolunteers as the volunteers' contemporaries. C doesn't identify an age imbalance that would explain the overall difference in well-being.
- D
Growing older need not change everyone's mental outlook. That doesn't address why these volunteers are doing better than these nonvolunteers. The inference under examination is about the effects of volunteering, not a claim that aging necessarily changes every person's outlook.
- ECorrect
People with better health, resources, outlook, and functioning are more able to volunteer. That supplies the alternative explanation we wanted. The advantages may help explain who becomes a volunteer instead of being benefits produced by volunteering.
Our bedridden retiree illustrates the problem: poor health can prevent participation. Comparing that person with a healthy volunteer would not show that volunteering caused the difference in health. The newsletter has not separated that possibility from the benefit it wants to claim.
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